Chapter Text
As Ruby laid awake on the floor she clutched harder onto the lamp shaped relic underneath her threadbare blanket, her mind still reeling from what had been revealed today. She was starting to hate secrets, first never being told about her eyes her whole life, traveling to Mistral to try and get back at Cinder not knowing that she has freaking magic powers!? And now the fact that Salem is immortal and Ozpin never had a plan! Ruby really hated secrets now more than ever, how much else of her life could have been a lie? She knew she was spiraling out of control mentally but she couldn’t help it, this was simply all too much! She curled tighter around the relic, with it somehow providing more warmth than the fire the group had lit at the abandoned farm. Slowly Ruby’s breathing began to even out and not long after she fell into what could have been a peaceful slumber.
Except it wasn’t, she was assaulted in her dreams by things seemingly beyond her comprehension. Colors that seemed to dart through her sight yet matched no color she had seen before. Shapes cloaked in this strange not-colors that twisted and writhed as if made from millions of starving maggots. Shapes that would alternate between two and three dimensional when she looked away. The harshness of her waking thoughts had nothing on what laid before her, such things seemed inconsequential now. Her mind felt as though it was being torn asunder and yet ever so clearer than before.
Sure enough the longer she viewed these not-colors and not-shapes she was able to focus more, seeing that she was in a seemingly endless void. When suddenly it hit her, she was beginning to hear something. Ever so faintly as her mind opened up further and further but she could hear it! A faint droning buzz seemed to emanate from herself and the not-shapes were mimicking her! Not long after they began to make their own not-song, their buzzing becoming louder until the sound became that of a shriek. With each of the not-maggots that made up the not-shapes screaming to be heard. Oh how the not-song pierced her ears! Blood pouring freely out of where her eardrums had ruptured, and yet now the beauty of the not-song was even more clear.
Slowly Ruby began to advance, smiling happily at the not-colors and not-shapes as she passed them by. Her body seemed to know where to go in this beautiful realm, who was she to oppose! Within the millennium of seconds, hours, days, years , she had been walking, singing along with the not-song, that she wanted to touch, embrace, a not-shape! After all they had been such lovely company, teaching her so much on how to writhe and stretch, to grow and change, to sing! Reaching out Ruby faintly brushed her hand against one of the ten, hundreds, thousands, millions , of not-shapes.
Suddenly everything stopped, it felt as if the not-colors were judging her, the not-shapes were so joyous, and the not-maggots screamed her name as if they finally recognized her. As suddenly as the stop had started the stopping had ended, the not-colors and not-shapes rapidly moving with a purpose now. The sight of it brought Ruby to tears and it felt as if her brain had joined the blood in flowing down out of her ears. The not-song had changed, becoming something of an incomprehensible chant that echoed in the fabric of the void. Years, weeks, days, milliseconds the not-shapes and not-colors had stilled, the not-chant seemed reverent towards her.
Stood before her was a door… a door that Ruby recognized. Miles and miles of walking and she finally reached the door that had initially been at arms length and never moved. Swinging it open revealed her and Yang’s bedroom, back home on Patch. Ruby ran her hand along the grooves in the door frame where their father had etched their heights as they grew. Moving further into the room nothing seemed out of place from the last time she had seen it. Even the thin layer of dust on Yang’s bed was still there. The only thing that stood out to Ruby, besides the window letting in pure white not-light, was a floating orb of something other hovering above her bed. It seemed to resonate with her aura, her soul , but she knew it wasn’t whole, this was just a part of something greater.
Yet still this orb, something so far beyond her even beyond the not-shapes and not-colors, it called to her so. This orb recognized her and needed her, all Ruby has ever wanted is to help people and so she walked towards it with open arms. Slowly she embraced it, drawing it close to her chest, trying to cradle it as her mother once did for her. In the months, seconds, decades, minutes that she cradled the orb it slowly began to phase into her chest near her heart. Somehow knowing what to do she accepted the Remnant of the Origin into herself and felt extremely tired afterward.
Luckily her bed was right below her, crawling under the covers Ruby curled back up like she had all those centuries ago before ending up here. As soon as she closed her eyes her breathing sped up as she suddenly shot out of bed. The threadbare blanket falling off of her top half and falling down to her lap as she sat up. Ruby turned her head and looked around herself, the fire much lower than when she had gone to bed and the sun beginning to rise over the horizon. The relic lacked the warmth it once and Ruby knew why, it was no longer a secret to her. She set the relic down as she slowly stood and stretched her body trying to fully wake herself from the millions of years she had been gone. A small sign escaped her lips as she looked at her team around her still sleeping, and then back at the sun a grin spreading across her face too wide with too many teeth, “This is going to be so much fun!”